Their voices are missing online simply because they are basically tech illiterate. And I think that is a huge problem.

I've seen a number of polls on the age demographics on the fediverse, and they've all been pretty consistent ... the fediverse is basically on average a Xennial place with a surprising amount of Boomer. There are younger folks, of course, more so on lemmy/kbin than mastodon it seems (which is interesting).

But generally, in line with your comment, there's a generational filter here that attracts those who remember the value of and how to use the old internet and old computers.

Which, if you think there's value in what the fediverse is trying to do (free our expression and ownership on the internet), is a problem. Another way of looking at it is that the failure of allowing big-private-monopoly-social platforms to dominate for so long^1^ will have long lasting side effects including the erasure of what the internet can be in many people's understanding of the world.

[1]: I'd estimate 2008-2023 as the era of dominant big social, where the closing year of 2023 may be too early or even open ended. That's 14 years. Which, if we take the web as having started in 1993, and being ~30 years old, is about half the age of the internet. So, it's a decently objective approximation, then, to say that the web is Facebook etc, especially as the relevance of older things fades. Which only amplifies the harm we allowed to transpire.

Also ... check it out ... lemmy can do footnotes!! Click the view source button to see how I did it if you're interested.